Junius's sarcasm did not, it seems, entirely cure Mr Tooke "of the little sneering sophistries of a collegian."

Mr Tooke next makes strange havoc with a whole host of metaphysical agents; like Sir Richard Blackmore,

"Undoes creation at a jerk,

And of redemption makes damn'd work."

"Rebelling angels, the forbidden tree, Heaven, hell, earth, chaos, all "—

are weighed in the balance and found wanting. We cannot say with Marvell, that the argument

"Holds us a while misdoubting his intent,
That he would ruin (for I saw him strong)
The sacred truths to fable and old song.

(So Sampson groped the temple's posts in spite)
The world o'erwhelming to revenge his sight."

For Mr Tooke leaves us in no doubt about his intent. All these sacred truths are, according to him, so many falsehoods, which by taking possession of certain adjectives and participles, have palmed themselves upon the world as realities, but which, by spelling their names backwards, he proposes to exorcise and reduce to their original nothingness again. Here follows a list of them which he has strung together, as a warning to all other pseudosubstantives. It is rather strange, by the bye,

that the author should have resorted to this mode of argument, since he affirms that adjectives are the names of things, as well as substantives; and laughs at Dr South for saying that they are the names of nothing.

"These words, these participles and adjectives," says Mr Tooke, "not understood as such, have caused a metaphysical jargon and a false morality, which can only be dissipated by etymology. And when they come to be examined you will find that the ridicule which Dr Conyers Middleton has so justly bestowed upon the papists for their absurd coinage of saints, is equally applicable to ourselves and to all other metaphysicians; whose moral deities, moral causes, and moral qualities are not less ridiculously coined and imposed upon their followers.

as well as just, right, and wrong are all merely participles poetically embodied and substantiated by those who use them.

"So Church, for instance (Dominicum aliquid) is an adjective; and formerly a most wicked. one: whose misinterpretation caused more slaughter and pillage of mankind than all the other cheats together."

Sir Francis says, "Something of this sort I can easily perceive, but not to the extent you carry it. I see that those sham deities, Fate and Destiny, aliquid fatum, quelque chose destinée, are merely the past participles of fari and destiner. That Chance (high arbiter,' as Milton calls him) and his twin-brother Accident are merely the participles of escheoir, cheoir, and cadere. And that to say, it befell me by chance or by accident, is absurdly saying it befell me by falling.

"I

agree with

you, that Providence, Prudence, Innocence, Substance, and all the rest of that tribe of qualities (in ence and ance) are merely the neuter plurals of the present participles of ordere, nocere, stare, &c. &c. That Angel, Saint, Spirit, are the past participles of ayyɛɛw, sanciri, spirare. That the Italian cucolo, a cuckoo, gives us the verb to cucol, and its past participle cuckold."

And what if it does: will Mr Tooke therefore pretend to say that there is no such thing? This is indeed turning etymology to a good account; it is clearing off old scores with a vengeance, and establishing morality on an entirely new basis. For my own part, I can only say of the whole of the reasoning of this author, with Voltaire's Candide, "la tête me tourne: on ne sait ou l'on est." Whether any or all of these metaphysical beings enumerated by Mr Tooke do or do not exist, what their nature or qualities are, whether modes, relatives, substancés, I shall not here undertake to determine, but I do conceive that none of these questions can be resolved in any way by inquiring whether the names denoting them are not the past participles of certain verbs. A shorter method would I think be to say at once that all metaphysical and moral terms, whether participles or not, are but names, that names are not things, and that therefore the things themselves have no existence. It is upon this philosophical principle that the heroical Jonathan Wild proceeds in his definition of the word Honour, for after losing himself to no purpose in the common metaphysical jargon on the subject, and in moral causes and qualities, he comes at last to this clear and unembarrassed conclusion,

"That honour consists in the word honour, and nothing else."

I will only give one instance more of this reformed system of logic and metaphysics.

"BURDETT. I still wish for an explanation of one word more: which on account of its extreme importance ought not to be omitted. What is Truth? You know when Pilate had asked the same question, he went out and would not stay for an answer, and from that time to this no answer has been given. And from that time to this mankind have been wrangling and tearing each other to pieces for the truth, without once considering the meaning of the word."

"TOOKE. This word will give us no trouble. Like the other words, true is also a past participle of the Saxon verb treowan, confidere, to think, to believe firmly, to be thoroughly persuaded of, to trow. True as we now write it, or trew, as it was formerly written, means simply and merely that which is trowed, and instead of its being a rare commodity upon earth, except only in words, there is nothing but truth in the world.

"That every man, in his communication with others, should speak that which he troweth, is of so great importance to mankind, that it ought not to surprise us, if we find the most extravagant and exaggerated praises bestowed upon